Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham has said on numerous occasions one of his goals before his tenure is over is to see a bear-hunting season in Louisiana.

That actually might happen, but it's going to be tight.

The black-bear population in Louisiana is rebounding well from lows in the 1950s when the state might not have supported even 100 bears. No official population estimate exists today, but four populations are established and growing. Recent research also proves intermingling among some of the groups of bears.

All the criteria needed to remove the Louisiana black bear from the endangered-species list appear to have been met, but whether hunters will get a crack at bears in the Bayou State will depend on how long the delisting process takes to work its way through the federal government, according to LDWF bear biologist Maria Davidson.

At a presentation of black-bear research data Tuesday in Baton Rouge, Davidson said whether hunters get to target bears doesn't depend on her agency.

"All of the information collected through this collaborative effort will be handed over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service," she said. "It's up to them what to do with it."

Once the service receives the data, it will analyze and determine if it agrees with the researchers findings, according to USFWS biologist Debbie Fuller.

"When a species is on the endangered species list, there's a threat to that species," she said. "In the process for removing it, we look to see if the threats have been eliminated. If threat analyses show bears are doing very well, we'll try to remove them from the list."

But that process will necessarily be deliberate.

At the meeting, Fuller was pressed by LDWF's Bob Love for a guesstimation on how long the process would take.

"I don't really have a very good timeline right now," she said. "I don't make the decision. The Secretary of the Interior makes the decision.

"If life were perfect -- no hurricanes, no oil spills -- we're looking at a year, year and a half."

That would put the delisting right around the time Gov. Bobby Jindal leaves office and Barham's tenure as secretary, presumably, ends.